Host Jennifer Kemp speaks with Anna Keesey about her new novel Little Century, which tells the story of eighteen-year-old Esther Chambers, who, after the death of her mother, heads west in search of her only living relative.

She settles in the lawless town of Century, Oregon and discovers that the town is in the midst of a range war. There’s plenty of land, but somehow it is not enough for the ranchers—it’s cattle against sheep, with water at a premium. In this charged climate, small incidents of violence swiftly escalate, and the bloodshed gets noticed by the railroad planners. Century will die without a railroad, a fate Pick and his men will go to any lengths to prevent.

Host Jim Schumock speaks with Bejamin Busch about his new memoir Dust to Dust, which is about ordinary things: life and death, peace and war, the adventures of childhood and the revelations of adulthood. Benjamin Busch—a decorated U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer who served two combat tours in Iraq, an actor on The Wire, and the son of celebrated novelist Frederick Busch.

Novelist Ron Rash on his new book "The Cove," story of a blazing but doomed love affair in WWI

Host Jim Schumock speaks with writer Ron Rash about his new book The Cove, a tale of the beauty of nature and love—and the darkness of superstition and fear. With The Cove, Rash, the author ofSerena, returns to the Appalachian milieu of his previous novels. This is a story of a love affair doomed in the rising turmoil of WWI. At the same time The Cove explores often dangerous notions of patriotism during wartime.

On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life—the fissures in her parents’ marriage, the loss of old friends, the hopeful anguish of first love, the bizarre behavior of her grandfather who, convinced of a government conspiracy, spends his days obsessively cataloging his possessions. As Julia adjusts to the new normal, the slowing inexorably continues.

A war has either started or is about to. Bombs are going off in the city. But people seem strangely disengaged. Della's activist friends seem more concerned about the next sex party or the finer points of vegan ideology, and customers at the vegan café where she works, talk of leaving the country for a life of escape and eco-tourism. But Della feels compelled to stay as the bombs inch closer. Even though she isn’t quite sure how to engage, and what exactly to fight for. This is the world of Zazen.

Erin Yanke interviews Mark Baumgarten, author of the book Love Rock Revolution: K Records and the Rise of Independent Music. Mark will be reading in Portland July 12th, 7:30pm, at Powells Books on Burnside. The reading and book signing will be followed by a K Records tribute concert at Valentine's (9pm, $3, 21+) with Clea Partridge, Grey Anne, and others.

It’s the 2020 Apocalypse and Sophie Cohen, former social worker turned neighborly drug dealer, must keep her family alive amid those pesky end of the world issues: starvation, earthquakes, plagues, gang violence and alas more starvation.She investigates a serial killing and takes down the sinister emerging power structure while learning to use a pizza box solar oven, bond with her chickens and blast tin cans from the perimeter fence with a Ruger 9MM.

Host Jay Thiemeyer speaks with writer BK Loren about her new novel "Theft," whose main character Willa Robbins is a master tracker working to reintroduce the Mexican wolf, North America’s most endangered mammal, to the American Southwest. But when Colorado police recruit her to find her own brother, Zeb, a confessed murderer, she knows skill alone will not sustain her. Willa is thrown back into the past, surfacing memories of a childhood full of intense love, desperate mistakes, and gentle remorse. "Theft" is a story about family, about loss, and about a search for answers.

Adam Levin’s debut novel, The Instructions, published by McSweeney’s in 2010, arrived with a lot of buzz. An inventive, experimental book of over one thousand pages, its protagonist was Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee, a 10 year old genius from Chicago, who may or may not be the Jewish Messiah. Levin’s short stories have appeared in Tin House, McSweeney’s and Esquire. He was the winner of the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award and the 2004 Joyce Carol Oates Fiction Prize among others.

Audio

Host Jim Schumock speaks with T.C. Boyle about his thirteenth novel, When the Killing's Done, which takes up some of the environmental themes of earlier novels such as A Friend of the Earth and The Tortilla Curtain, and stories like “Carnal Knowledge,”“Top of the Food Chain,”“Tooth and Claw.” It is set in the past decade on the California Channel Islands, where a rather testy turf war was fought between animal rights activists and the biologists of the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy over the elimination of non-native species of plants and animals, and this provided the inspiration for the book. Boyle says that the novel "is a series of dramatic confrontations between those who say nay and those who say yea, but, as readers will I hope discover, such distinctions become increasingly more complex and ethically challenging. Just how precious is any given life — and who gets to decide?"

Host Dave Mazza speaks with Robert C. Donnelly, assistant professor of history at Gonzaga University, and author of "Dark Rose: Organized Crime and Corruption in Portland."

In April 1956, Portland Oregonian investigative reporters Wallace Turner and William Lambert exposed organized crime rackets and rampant corruption within the city's law enforcement institutions. The biggest scandal involved Teamsters officials and the city's lucrative prostitution, gambling, and bootlegging operations. Turner and Lambert blew the cover on the Teamsters scheme to take over alcohol sales and distribution and profit from these fringe enterprises. The Rose City was seething with vice and intrigue.

The exposé and other reports of racketeering from around the country incited a national investigation into crime networks and union officials headed by the McClellan Committee, or officially, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field. The Commission discovered evidence in Portland that helped prove Teamsters President Dave Beck's embezzlement of union funds and union Vice President Jimmy Hoffa's connection to the mob.

Dark Rose reveals the sordid details of an important period in the history of Portland.

Host Kathleen Stephenson speaks with Jason Felch, co-author with Ralph Frammolino, of "Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum." Felch talks about the illegal trade of looted antiquities and how some at the Getty Museum worked with networks of criminals to obtain illicit treasures.

Host Marianne Barisonek speaks with Portlander Martha Shelley, feminist, gay activist and author, about her The Throne in the Heart of the Sea and about her decades-long interest in Jezebel, a Phoenician princess who became the Queen of Israel.

Martha Shelley is a prolific writer on the intersection of women’s issues, politics and religion. She has spent the last few years researching the historical and religious role of women in the Bible to better understand today’s controversies created by the efforts for a more inclusive and powerful role for women in society and religious life.

Science fiction and fantasy writer China Mieville has won nearly every award in the genre and has caught the attention of mainstream publications from the New York Times to the Guardian with the depth of his imagination and the height of his erudition. David Naimon interviews him about his new, much anticipated, book "Embassytown," a book Ursula Le Guin describes as follows: "Embassytown is a fully achieved work of art…Works on every level, providing compulsive narrative, splendid intellectual rigour and risk, moral sophistication, fine verbal fireworks and sideshows, and even the old-fashioned satisfaction of watching a protagonist become more of a person than she gave promise of being.”

Host Ed Goldberg speaks with Cara Black, author of "Murder in Passy," the latest in her popular series of detective novels set in Paris and featuring Aimee Leduc.

In her books Cara Black features a Paris little known outside the tourist track. In real life she lives in San Francisco where she is a San Francisco Library Laureate and a member of the Paris Societe Historique in the Marais. She is included in the "Great Women Mystery Writers," by Elizabeth Lindsay.

Host David Naimon interviews Portland writer Scott Sparling about his debut novel, Wire to Wire, from Tin House Books.

A pick of the week by Publisher's Weekly, they call Wire to Wire "well crafted and thrilling, tying together an obvious love for both Michigan and railroads with an expert sense of timing and plot. The world he has created is both overwhelming and exhilarating, thanks in no small part to a large ensemble of memorable characters and a relentless pace. Indeed, hardly a page goes by without some sort of fantastic calamity throwing Slater and company into further turmoil—when the most peaceful passages of the story are speed-addled, that's saying something—but it's done so well that hopping off this runaway train would never cross a reader's mind.”

Former Portlander Cary Groner talks about his novel Exiles, the story of an American volunteer doctor and his teenage daughter whose lives are irrevocably changed when they move to Kathmandu and find themselves in the midst of civil war.

Cary Groner studied Buddhist meditation and philosophy with the late Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, and continues to spend several weeks a year in meditation retreat when possible. In 2009, he received his MFA in fiction writing from the University of Arizona. His short stories have won numerous awards. His story “Elaborate Preparations for Departure” won the Glimmer Train fiction open and was published in the summer 2010 issue. Hosted by Ren Green.

Comments

I've read the book twice and rather hoped to hear the program that the author spoke on the book. But that page was not available on your site. Anyway, I loved the book. I thought it was an exciting dose of history. Stoner brought the Portland of 1900 to life. There was intrigue that kept my interest throughout the book.